


Sum of Our Parts

by ExpressAndAdmirable



Series: The Heroes of Light [38]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Final Fantasy I
Genre: Backstory, Bards Being Bards, Gen, Magical Tattoos, Recovery, Self-Reflection, Tattoos, The Jaxa Cycle, Tiefling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-26 15:37:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13238805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpressAndAdmirable/pseuds/ExpressAndAdmirable
Summary: Lux discovers tattoos as a form of therapy.





	Sum of Our Parts

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of the more personal pieces I've written, as a lot of my tattoos have come at times of great stress in my life, so I appreciate the idea of tattoos as a form of spiritual exploration and self-care. I have the good fortune to live in the North Shore area of Massachusetts, where many tattoo artists and studios specialise in this kind of intentional, transformational art (the character Mae in this piece is loosely based on one such artist).

“Breathe, kid. Let it go. Atta girl, get it out of you. Just… breathe.”

Lux exhaled slowly, trying her best to relax back into the pillows. The faintest hint of a smile ghosted across her face; just as her mother still called her “baby” and Mourat had never stopped calling her “little one”, she suspected Mae would call her “kid” until they were both old and grey. Sharp pain radiated through her chest, pressing against her lungs and making her heart pound. It was necessary. She had asked for this. Breathe. She closed her eyes and let the incense do its work.

The first time she had been sixteen, angry and lost and searching for something permanent in her ever-crumbling world. The Dwarf in the shop next to the brothel had taken her coin without much conversation, directing her to his chair and using a small chisel to stab the ink into the back of her neck. Every tap sent white-hot starbursts through the base of her skull, making her disoriented and dizzy, but weathering the pain filled her with a sense of accomplishment she could not fully describe. The tattoo, elegant twin F-holes copied from her violin that reached up toward her hairline and down into her collar, made her feel as if a missing piece of her had been returned. She had found a way to make herself whole.

She returned to the shop next to the brothel periodically over the next three years, paying her coin and speaking little and watching her bare skin slowly fill with delicate illustrations. But when she asked him for letters, he had refused. Words had power, he said, and he was not willing to delve into that sort of magic. She had left the shop in sullen disappointment, but eventually came to accept the Dwarf’s reaction not as a sign that the tattoos were wrong, but simply that they were not yet meant to be. So she sketched her ideas in her book, and she waited.

The Festival of Torches that autumn was plagued by inclement weather. Some days started with rain but would clear by the afternoon, while others began with bright sunshine until the sky filled with huge, ominous clouds. It was in one of these flash storms that Lux found herself caught, hugging her violin case to her chest as she ran for shelter. She had been performing in a stall-sized open space in a long row of merchant’s tents, but none she could see had enough of an overhang to provide any cover. Slowing to a walk, her shoulders hunched over her instrument, she looked around in desperation. So much for busking.

“Hey, kid. Why don’t you come inside?”

Startled, Lux whirled to see an open tent flap and a red-skinned face peering out at her. The woman beckoned. Lux bobbed her head in thanks, breaking into an embarrassed smile as she ducked inside.

Warm and quiet despite the rain pounding on the canvas, the interior of the tent felt like another world. A richly patterned rug covered the hard-packed dirt beneath their feet, a pile of pillows in the centre of it and a single large cushion to one side. A low table sat beside the cushion, covered in an array of small jars and long, thin implements. In the far corner across from the cushion sat another small table, this one holding crystals of varying sizes, dried herbs, a small statue of a deity Lux did not recognise and incense burning in a bronze holder. A round lantern made of tiny panes of glass hung between the two supporting poles, casting soft shafts of light through the smoke filling the air.

“You alright, kid? Get caught out there?”

Lux nodded, shivering involuntarily as her body adjusted to her sodden clothes. “Yeah. Saw the clouds roll in, couldn’t pack up my supplies in time.” She loosened her shoulders enough to rake her fingers through her wet hair.

“You’re the musician, yeah? From up the row?” The Tiefling woman was shorter than Lux and easily her mother’s age, her dark blue hair tied in a messy bun behind the sweep of her horns. She was barefoot, clad in soft trousers and a sleeveless wrapped tunic, her skin covered in intricate designs from her throat to her fingertips. Even the top side of her tail was decorated, a complex geometric pattern accompanied by a row of paired silver studs travelling from the hem of her tunic all the way to the tail’s tip. Her black eyes regarded Lux curiously as she puffed on a wooden pipe. “I can hear you from in here. Good stuff, that. Makes for good ambience.”

“Thank you.” Lux’s gaze darted about the tent with childlike curiosity, trying to absorb every detail. “What do you do here?”

“Ritual, restorative and sacred body modification.” Seeing the questioning tilt of Lux’s head, she continued. “Tattooing and scarification, mainly. Sometimes piercings. Whatever my clients need.”

Listening intently, Lux squinted. “Need?” She had never considered tattoos a need before.

The woman nodded. “Need. I specialise in working with clients looking for some sort of healing. Trauma victims, those dealing with loss or illness or spiritual crisis, those who need protection.” Her tone was brusque, but not unkind; clearly, she was used to explaining her craft. “Scarification and tattooing are lengthy, painful processes, and putting your body through an ordeal like that can bring a lot of buried emotions to the surface. When that happens – in many cases by design – I help my clients release the energy and begin to come to terms with its causes. We work together to create the piece they want, discuss its meaning and their intentions for it, and then I guide them verbally through the session. It’s a powerful, transformative experience.” She smiled softly. “They call me a white witch,” she confided, one Tiefling to another. “I’ll take it.”

For a long time, Lux considered the older woman's words. Then she met her eye. “Do you work with letters?”

It became a tradition. Each year when Festival time came and Lux had earned enough money to afford her next session, she would visit Mae’s tent. First, Mae’s needles traced Lux’s father’s name into her vermilion skin, the sloping Infernal symbols making the younger Tiefling smile even as she wept. They added animals, alchemical runes, plantlife and sigils onto her arms, covering them with pictographic armour; eventually, they connected the pieces on the left arm with snaking ivy and the right with the notes of Lux’s most precious piece of music. They pierced silver rings into her ears and tiny studs into her brow, nose and lip, and with each addition, she felt more beautiful. More protected. More whole.

Today, nearly a year since she had left one of the darkest chapters of her life behind, Lux lay on the pillows with her vest unlaced as Mae’s needles worked the ink into her sternum. Each tattoo was different; her upper arms had felt like sunburns, while the creases of her inner elbows had been sharp, like a thousand bee stings. With no tissue to protect her chest, however, every lightning-fast knock of the needle against her breastbone vibrated powerfully through her body. Mae worked quickly, her rough hands steady and warm. She reminded Lux to breathe. Her journey was only beginning.

It was a different high than when she smoked, almost a trance state, brought on by the waves of sensation emanating from the tattoo site. The heavy, spiced smoke of the incense filled the warm air of the tent, and as she inhaled, she opened her mind. She was ready.

Heartache. Despair. All the emotions she fought to suppress, all the memories she had tried so hard to bury, slowly drifted to the surface of her consciousness. The hell of her own past. But she knew she could not turn away; this was what she had come to face. She reached deep into the pain, acknowledging it, soothing it, pushing it up through nerves and pinprick wounds as tears slid gently down her cheeks.

Infernal runes. _The sacred from the profane_ , inscribed in a place that was only for her and those who earned her deepest trust. A reclamation.

It hurt. It needed to hurt. She breathed.

**Author's Note:**

> Title song by Mary Lambert.
> 
> Follow me on Tumblr at @expressandadmirable for a proper table of contents for the Heroes campaign, commissioned character art, text-based roleplay snippets and more!


End file.
